As long as we know where our towel is, there is no need to panic...

Since we were talking about SPOT yesterday, I think it is only fair to touch on a  subject that seems way too obvious to mention but looking at today's mailbag, apparently not so...

Communication while on passage is a somewhat dodgy affair at best. Once you get out of cellphone range (or in my view further, than you can yell) all bets are off and plans for your passage should reflect this.

It does not really matter whether you have SSB, HAM, Sat-Phone, SPOT, two-dixie-cups-and-a-very-very-long-string or whatever the flavor of the month communication device you might have can fail. If there is one law at sea that you should depend on it's Murphy's.

Being out of communication is not even a bad thing because we all are self-sufficient or should be. The fact that when setting off across the Atlantic or other long passage it should be planned for that (for instance) if the SSB (or whatever) packs up because you left a port open and it got wet and shorted out that your friends or family will not set off a giant search and rescue effort to find you simply because you missed a couple of radio check-ins...

When we do a long passage we tell those on our SPOT list that we are leaving towards (remember never to) X and if luck is with us that we should be somewhere or other by a certain date give or take a couple of weeks and whatever happens to the SPOT signal (short of the emergency message) not to worry and we will call you from someplace when we get there.

Schedules are hard to keep at sea. We once sat a hundred and fifty miles from the Cape Verde islands heading towards Martinique with not a breath of wind for over two weeks waiting for the trades to develop. This put our planned passage way behind schedule but that is just part of what sailing is about. We did not need rescuing, we were simply waiting for wind.

We once had a charter client's mother call us panicked out of her mind, because her daughter must have been abducted by pirates in the BVI. The reason she gave for this knowledge was that her daughter calls her everyday and as she missed a day we should call out the Marines or some-such... I'm not exactly sure why the daughter did not call but I'd hazard a guess that it being her honeymoon she may have had better things to do or had simply got a gander at the silly roaming charges that the Boat Phone folks charged... Anyway, whatever the reason for not calling, the Mom was seriously panicked and she was ready to call the Coast Guard and all the powers that be to save her daughter. I get that... It's scary being a parent.

So it is very important to let those close to us know just what is involved and explain that in a lot of places in the world you just can't always call home and not to worry when it happens.

So it goes...